KROQ Christmas Benefit Turns Into Smashing Love Fest

Billy Corgan’s holiday wish list, as presented toward the end of his often-gripping performance during KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas concert Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium, is a fairly simple matter: “I would like to ask your indulgence for one more song. I’d like to wish you a merry Christmas. I’d like to thank God for the planet.”

Does that sound like someone in the midst of a career crisis so deep that, with sales of “Adore,” the most recent album by his band, the Smashing Pumpkins, falling far short of many expectations, he just fired the group’s high-power management team and now stands at a business and artistic intersection?

Instead, in this truly acoustic performance accompanied not by his bandmates but only by pianist Mike Garson, he was nothing but humble and grateful, warmly embracing the audience, and being warmly embraced in kind for his songs of internal yearnings. It was closer in demeanor to Jackson Browne than a post-grunge rocker.

And it was a sharp change of tone from the preceding set by Garbage, far and away the other highlight of a mixed-bag evening ranging from the novelty swing of the Brian Setzer Orchestra to the brooding hues of all-time KROQ favorite Depeche Mode, which was joined by Corgan for its final song, “Never Let Me Down Again.”

Both Corgan’s warmth and Garbage’s power offer encouragement to anyone fearing that there’s no place left for sincere artists in a modern-rock realm increasingly geared to the catchy and clever as opposed to the meaningful, where hit singles are more important than the people who make them.

Example: Last year’s Christmas shows included Everclear. Saturday featured Everlast. Anyone paying less than full attention could be excused for not realizing that they are different acts. That’s no swipe at either’s value. Everclear is an earnest, talented trio, while Everlast’s Erik Schrody showed in his opening set that the former House of Pain leader has evolved his old group’s brash hip-hop into a richly scruffy and highly promising meld of rock and rap.

It’s a swipe at the fact that their value in the marketplace today seems to rest only on whether they can provide radio hooks. Saturday’s lineup was littered with the like, many of them veterans of the pop wars currently riding breakthrough hits. Cake, a band that’s been at it for a while, is now hot stuff thanks to two quirky, trumpet-laced, rap-rock pieces. Semisonic, whose leader Dan Wilson is also a pop veteran, has caught on with the elastic power-pop melody of “Closing Time.” Soul Coughing has also broken through with the neo-beatnik “Circles.”

While these are artists of relative merit getting a well-earned chance, the reality is that a year from now, every last one of them could be discarded in favor of someone else who happens to have a catchy song. In that kind of world, what’s a Pumpkin to do?

Saturday, Corgan could take heart in the clear evidence that his music continues to touch his audience, with the fans singing along and showering him with shouts of affection.

“My life has been extraordinary, blessed and cursed and won,” Corgan sang in “Muzzle,” a 1995 song of personal affirmation. Indeed, the “curse” of lowered commercial expectations could well prove a blessing for both his art and his bond with his fans.

Garbage, too, has not lived up to some sales projections for its second album, “Version 2.0.” Yet there was no air of disappointment evident Saturday, but rather extra determination and purpose. This was the band’s third KROQ Christmas appearance in four years, each time better than before, and this one relentless in the power of its electronic-enhanced rock and the performance of singer Shirley Manson.

Prowling, pacing and stalking the stage, she seemed a ‘90s rock Ann-Margret, but with the fierce, feminine independence of Chrissie Hynde--two of whose songs, not coincidentally, are quoted in the current single, “Special.” This band is indeed special and certainly capable of transcending both the stifling hit mentality and the burden of inflated expectations.